I only found one topic on this but it is from 2004/2005, so here is a repost.
What are the help authoring tools that are in use by the servoy community? We have always used RoboHelp, but since we started with Servoy we are considering if we should start using another tool.
Any input is helpfull, including integrating context sensitive help (in webhelp output) in a Servoy Solution that uses the smart client.
JeePee:
Any input is helpfull, including integrating context sensitive help (in webhelp output) in a Servoy Solution that uses the smart client.
We’re using Author-It and it’s a great tool for creating documentation and manuals. Different output formats are possible as PDF, Word and HTML Help.
I’m still wondering if Servoy could supply support for context sensitive help with Author-It documents?
What I have been doing for Help related things is catching current user context via an element level method call (via onFocusLost). I write the current user context (ie - the form and element last known to have focus) information to globals.
Button level code (which can invoke conventional calls to things like application.getMethodTriggerElementName()) also write context to these same paired global variables (user context for form/element) through a global Help event handler. onFocusLost for elements calls this common global method. Some of this can be automated (to save work at an element level) through event handlers.
This data is then checked against a Help database with a unique pk (integer) with the appropriate columns for form, element, subject, Help content etc.
I imagine it should not be too difficult to move info from Author-It (via db manager node against say SQL server/Author-It or via an XML transmission) back and forth to the Servoy solution. The form and element context will need to be declared somehow or other in Author-It anyway.